Federal Government Will Review Ramarley Graham Shooting

Constance Malcolm, with red hair, and Frank Graham, parents of Ramarley Graham, stood by as their lawyer Royce Russell spoke at a news conference on Thursday.

By Sean Gardiner and John Surico

The U.S. Department of Justice will review the case of an unarmed 18-year-old Bronx teen who was fatally shot by a police officer to determine if any civil rights laws were violated, federal officials said Thursday.

The review comes after a Bronx grand jury on Wednesday declined to indict the officer, Richard Haste, 31 years old, in the 2012 killing of Ramarley Graham.

Mr. Haste initially was indicted on a charge of manslaughter by a different grand jury in June 2012.

Those charges were overturned in May by a Bronx judge. In that ruling, the judge said prosecutors improperly told grand jurors that, in weighing whether Mr. Haste acted properly, they could disregard evidence that other officers told Mr. Haste they believed Mr. Graham was armed just before the shooting.

Mr. Haste shot the teen inside his home after a police chase.

Protesters outside the Bronx district attorney’s office on Thursday.

The officer appeared in front of a second grand jury on Tuesday, delivering “very emotional and very direct” testimony about his thoughts in the seconds before he pulled the trigger, said his lawyer, Stuart London.

Mr. Graham’s parents—along with community leaders, politicians and mayoral candidates—decried the decision at a news conference outside the Bronx District Attorney’s Office on Thursday.

“Feb. 2 happened to us again yesterday,” said Constance Malcolm, the teen’s mother, referring to the date her son was killed. “Where is justice? Where is Ramarley’s justice?

“I am more than outraged. Richard Haste broke into our home and killed my son in cold blood,” she added. “We demand an immediate federal investigation into my son’s death. We will continue to fight without rest until we win justice.”

Hours later, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said the agency “will review all of the available evidence with respect to the shooting…including the evidence collected during the state’s investigation, to determine whether there were any violations of the federal criminal civil rights laws.”

Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson said he was “surprised and shocked” by the grand jury’s decision.

“We are saddened for the family of the deceased young man and still believe that the court’s dismissal of the original indictment was overly cautious,” he added.

But the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association said the panel “courageously came to the right and proper decision.”

“This grand jury recognized that police officer Haste was pursuing what he had every reason to believe was a man with a gun. He was facing the same imminent danger that all police officers face as we fight to rid our neighborhoods of dangerous, illegal guns,” said PBA President Patrick Lynch.

On the day of the incident, Mr. Haste was part of a team of four plainclothes narcotics officers assigned to watch a bodega located on the corner of Mr. Graham’s block in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx, New York Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly has said in previous comments.

Other police officers on patrol told Mr. Haste that they saw Mr. Graham fidgeting with his waistband; they believed he was carrying a gun, Mr. Kelly said.

When officers approached Mr. Graham, he ran—police chased him to his family’s second-floor apartment in a building on East 229 Street, Mr. Kelly said.

Officers broke down the door to the apartment when no one answered and spotted Mr. Graham ducking into the bathroom, Mr. Kelly said.

There, Mr. Graham attempted to flush a bag of marijuana down the toilet, Mr. Kelly said.

Mr. Haste told the grand jury on Tuesday that he yelled at Mr. Graham to show his hands several times “because his mind-set was that he had a weapon,” Mr. London said.

Mr. Graham didn’t comply and turned around. As Mr. Haste pulled the trigger, “he yelled out ‘gun, gun’ letting the backup team know they were walking into what he believed was a situation where he thought there was a gun because he was so convinced he so going to be shot,” Mr. London said Mr. Haste told the grand jury.

The significant difference between the first and second grand juries, Mr. London said, was that the second was allowed to consider that Mr. Haste’s mind-set was influenced by what his fellow officers told him before he fired the fatal shot.

Also, Mr. Haste was nervous during his first grand jury testimony, Mr. London said.

On Tuesday, during his second testimony, “he was very emotional and very direct and I think he was able to effectively communicate to the grand jury what his state of mind was right before he had to shoot,” Mr. London said. “He clearly indicated to them that shooting Mr. Graham was the last thing he wanted to do.

“To go from an indictment for manslaughter to being found to be justified is such a huge turnaround…I’ve never seen anything like it in my career,” Mr. London said.

The district attorney’s office has no legal recourse to the decision, a spokesman said.